FICTION BY CHRISTOPHER SWEET

Christopher Sweet is the author of four published books, his latest being the supernatural horror novel, The Orchid Room. He is an avid reader and a nature hound who isn’t above crawling through the dirt to get a closer look at a particularly interesting beast, bird, or bug. He lives with his growing tribe of people and pets on a (mostly) peaceful river in New Brunswick’s Acadian Peninsula.

You can follow his madness on Instagram or Facebook at
@authorchristopherweet
or his website 
www.authorchristophersweet.com

MOIST
by Christopher Sweet

“It stinks,” Levi said as he smeared the cream over the backs of his hands, smooshing it between his fingers and palms. It made a squelching, farting sound that did nothing to improve his discomfort.

Kayla gave him a hard stare. “No more whining. They said seven days should fix the problem. You can keep this up for a week, you big baby.”

She was right, of course. Deep down, the grown-up part of Levi knew the cream would be absorbed by his skin in minutes and he wouldn’t even notice it was ever there, except, hopefully, when results started to show. The eternal eight-year-old dwelling in his heart, though, demanded he wipe his hands off with a towel immediately; this was gross, like all goopy, slimy things.

He had suffered his fair share of sunburns as a child because of his aggressive aversion to having cream, lotion, or ointment of any sort applied to his body. When he caught poison ivy in fourth grade, he had to tape his fingers to keep from scratching, which was the alternative to having a smidgen of calamine lotion applied to his legs. But today, even the child in him had to admit something needed to be done about his hands.

Last winter, Levi’s hands had chapped and cracked, as they always do. But when springtime came around this time, the dryness only got worse. By June, his hands were so dry and split that he was bandaging his knuckles and fingers every morning to keep from getting blood on everything. His co-workers had taken to calling him the Invisible Man.

Finally, Kayla dragged him to their GP, who referred Levi to a dermatologist. The dermatologist, a no-nonsense woman named Dr. Zandi, looked closely at Levi’s hands before scraping some of the dry skin from one of his knuckles into a clear, plastic dish. She sent the scrapings to a lab and when Levi returned a week later, she presented him with a small glass jar full of a grayish cream.

“Apply three times daily,” she said. “Once in the morning, again at midday, then before bed.” She’d then handed him a pair of white, cotton gloves. “Put these on after the cream and keep them on overnight. They’ll help lock in the moisture.”

Levi turned the jar over in his hands, inspecting the contents, feeling a cold sweat on the back of his neck at the mere thought of having to put the stuff on. “What is it?”

Dr. Zandi cocked an eye at him, as if it was a silly question. “Moisturizer. A very effective, very powerful moisturizer. Should see results in fewer than seven days.”

Now Levi held his glistening hands out in front of him, unable to even look at them.

“Can you put the gloves on, please,” he said to Kayla, trying to keep the impatient edge out of his voice. He needed to stay on her good side, since she was helping him.

Mercifully, she slipped the gloves over his hands without complaining. She stood back and grinned at him. “You look like a cartoon character. You know, like how Bugs Bunny always wears those white gloves.”

“It’s wabbit season,” Levi said, bobbing his eyebrows with exaggerated lasciviousness.

“Not my kink,” Kayla said.

*****

Lying in bed, Levi didn’t think he’d be able to get to sleep. For a long time, he lay awake, thinking about the gloves on his hands. He fought the temptation to rip them off, scour his hands under hot water, and then scrub them dry with a towel. At some point he finally fell asleep.

He woke the next morning first feeling alarm, then shame. That mental eight-year-old began chiding him before he could even open his eyes, because something felt familiar. Something from his childhood.

Under the blankets, he was soaked. He was horrified to realize he had wet the bed. Was it because of his aversion to putting cream on his hands? It seemed excessive, even for him, to be so anxious that he lost control of his bladder while sleeping.

Next to him, Kayla still slept. It was Saturday and therefore no alarm had been set. Pale light cut through the closed blinds, letting in bits of morning light. Levi thought it might be around six o’clock. The prospect of waking Kayla up so early on a Saturday morning—to tell her she was covered in his pee no less—made him ashamed.

He slid out of bed and only remembered the gloves on his hands when he pulled them out from under the covers. They were sopping wet, heavy with his urine, which dripped from them onto the floor in a steady stream. Disgusting!

Even as soaked as he was, he was baffled to realize he had to pee again. Now worried he might have a bladder infection, he padded to the En Suite bathroom, dripping the whole way. At least it didn’t smell, which struck him as a bit odd. Urine always had an ammonia-like smell.

In the bathroom, he peeled the gloves off and dropped them in the bathtub, where they landed with a splat. He got fully undressed and stood at the toilet to relieve himself. His habit was to stare at the painting above the toilet—a landscape by someone he’d never heard of—while he peed, so he wasn’t paying much attention to his aim, which wasn’t typically an issue. When he looked down, however, he was mortified to see he’d splashed all over the edge of the bowl, onto the floor, and all over his hands. What the hell was wrong with him?

Levi grabbed a towel from the rack and dried off the toilet seat. In seconds, the towel was soaked. So much pee. He was revolted with himself, but a fascinated concern was now taking over. Lost in frightened wonderment at his own body, he didn’t notice the towel was still taking on moisture until it was a sopping ball in his hands, which were still soaked.

“What the—” he started to say.

He was cut off by Kayla shrieking from the bedroom.

“Did you piss in the bed?” she screamed at him.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, embarrassed and confused.

The towel now lay at his feet. He saw liquid drops fall onto the towel and realized the moisture was coming from his hands. Somehow liquid was still drizzling to the floor. It ran off his hands as if there was a hose running through his arms.

He shook his hands, flinging what had to be water onto the floor and walls. Or was it perspiration? Had those gloves made his hands so warm some sort of extreme sweat reflex was triggered?

Kayla appeared in the doorway, clad in panties and a tight t-shirt, the bottom few inches of which was damp, and gaped at the mess in the bathroom. Floor soaked, clothing in the tub, towel on the floor, and Levi, naked, hands still dripping.

“What the hell are you doing?” she said, voice still croaky with sleep.

Levi raised his hands in exasperation, which caused more water to fling about, some of which splashed into his face, onto his lips. It tasted like ordinary water, not sweat or pee, not that he thought he could identify the taste of urine.

“Call Dr. Zandi,” he said. “I think I’m having some kind of reaction to the moisturizer. I can’t use my phone.” He held up his hands. Water ran down them in rivulets.

Kayla stared. “Is that coming from inside you?”

Levi couldn’t find words to reply. Fortunately, Kayla didn’t wait for an answer before darting back into the room, presumably to find her phone.

His wife’s words unsettled Levi. The water must be coming from inside him, that much seemed obvious. But how much did he have to lose? He couldn’t leak forever. And if he ran out of moisture, what then? He cranked the cold water tap so it flowed at full blast, filled the communal cup they kept next to the sink, and chugged two full glasses.

Kayla returned a few minutes later and said, “They’re closed on Saturdays. I left a message with their call center and told them it’s an emergency. They said they’d try to get a hold of her, but recommended going to the ER, which I agree with.” She kept her eyes locked on his dripping hands.

Levi opened his mouth to agree but was cut off by the sound of water splashing onto the floor. He’d flooded the sink. He turned to shut off the tap and froze with his hand outstretched. The tap was off; he’d shut it off after his second cup of water.

The hand he held out to reach the faucet was now gushing. Water flowed from his fingertips, splashing on the counter and into the sink. The other hand shot water straight onto the floor. He held both over the sink and it immediately began to fill, water coming too fast for the drain to keep up with.

“Bathtub,” Kayla said, seeing the problem. “Where’s it all coming from?”

Levi got in the tub, careful not to slip on the water spraying out of him. “I drank some water because I was scared of running out. Now it’s coming out of me faster than ever.”

“Okay; well, maybe don’t do that anymore,” she said, throwing dry towels down onto the floor to soak up the mess.

“What if I dry out?” Levi said.

The words sounded foolish but it was a legitimate concern. He didn’t feel thirsty but there was no way his body could keep this up without having some impact on his health.

Kayla chewed her lip for a second, then said, “Okay, good point. Stay in the tub and maybe keep drinking a little bit at a time until we can figure this out.” She handed him the glass from next to the sink.

“What are you going to do?” Levi asked, afraid to be left alone. His body might go into shock at any minute. Then he could pass out in the tub and potentially drown in his own body fluid.

“Before I take you to the ER, I’m going to try calling our family doctor,” she said. “At least they have someone on call over the weekend. I’ll also see if I can find anything out on the internet. Where’s the jar of moisturizer?”

“Dresser,” Levi said.

Kayla left the room, already tapping at her phone.

For a few minutes, Levi held his hands in front of him and watched the water pour from his fingertips. It seemed to be coming entirely from his hands, starting at the wrists. His arms were mostly dry. It reminded him of burbling fountains or small, creekside waterfalls where the water seemed to flow out from the rocks themselves.

Thinking of the loss of fluids again, Levi turned on the cold water tap of the tub, wincing at the icy shock of it on his lower half, and filled the glass. He chugged the water and then, for good measure, had one more glass.

Almost immediately, the water pressure in his hands increased. Water shot out from them in a jet so intense it sprayed off the linoleum and out onto the floor, which hadn’t dried much anyway. Now instead of a faucet on full blast, his hands were spraying like two pressure washers. The water sprayed back into his face, blinding him.

He moved them around, trying to find a more convenient place to aim the jets, and screamed when he accidentally pointed them at his own thighs. The water shooting into his flesh was like a thousand needles stabbing into him at the same time. He had a tattoo on his back, a meaningless tribal design he’d gotten in college, and distinctly remembered the feeling of the tattoo gun. This was like a hundred tattoo artists working on the same spots on his legs all at once.

Finally, he found he could sort of aim both streams directly into the bathtub drain. It didn’t stop the water from splashing back at him, but cut it down significantly.

Levi looked down and gasped. Both thighs bled profusely from holes bored into his flesh by the jets of water. A lot of blood came from them.

“Kayla!” he screamed over the roar of the water.

She came running in, slipping and nearly wiping out on the sopping towels strewn about. Her eyes widened at the intensity of the water shooting out of him. She cried out his name when she spotted the blood flowing from his legs.

“Oh my God, what happened?” she said. And then, “There’s an ambulance on the way.”

She reached out and touched the edge of one of the gory pits in Levi’s thigh. Her touch lit the spot up in the agony of a thousand bee stings. His reaction was immediate and unthinking.

He raised his hands up as if to ward her off. It was an innocent enough gesture, simply a non-verbal way of telling someone to stop, no more, it hurts.

The water sliced through his wife like the lasers they use to cut diamonds. It slashed up her body as Levi raised his hands, rending the flesh of her torso. The action was too automatic for him to stop on time. His hands went all the way up to the level of his head, which aimed the jets at Kayla’s throat, nearly decapitating her in an instant.

She burbled out a couple of words that were lost over the sound of the water, then her head fell to one side, coming to rest on her shoulder, while blood poured from her neck, washed away as quickly as it came. She collapsed in a lifeless, bleeding heap before Levi could completely lower his hands.

Levi screamed his throat raw. He tried to hold onto the edge of the tub but the intensity of the water pressure pushed his hands back from it. Instead he let them hang at his sides, pointing out away from him, while he sobbed. He was wet enough all over he couldn’t tell if he was producing tears or not. He could hardly hear himself over the water against the tub.

Kayla’s phone lay on the floor next to her body, in a puddle of watery blood. It lit up and Levi could just make out the name of their doctor on the screen, returning Kayla’s call, he guessed.

Unthinking, he reached out to grab the phone and only succeeded in pushing it across the bathroom floor. He flinched when he did this and his hands jerked. One of the jets of water hit Kayla’s jaw and succeeded in completely separating her head from her body, pushing it across the floor and into the corner.

Levi screamed and raised his hands to the sides of his head in an involuntary act of grief and two extremely high-pressured jets of water shot into each of his temples.

*****

Carter pulled his kit from the ambulance. Sherry, his partner, was already at the front door of the house, pounding on it and calling out that they were EMS and to please let them in.

“Try the door?” Carter said as he approached. “Dispatch said she sounded pretty frantic.”

Sherry turned the knob and grinned at him. “Thank God for trusting citizens.”

“They can thank us when they…” Carter’s voice trailed off.

The moment his partner opened the front door of the house, a flood of water burst from it, nearly sweeping them both off their feet.

“What the shit?” Sherry said. “They need an ambulance or plumbers?”

When the torrent subsided, they stepped inside, calling for the occupants to let them know where in the house to go. Eventually they made their way upstairs, following the waterfall still trickling down the staircase. They traced the flow to the master bedroom and Sherry led the way into the En Suite.

“Dear God above,” she muttered, stepping back from the door and holding a hand over her mouth.

Carter, who had never seen his partner react to something they’d seen on the job with anything less than complete stoicism, hesitated before approaching the door into the adjoining bathroom. He had a job to do, though, and couldn’t allow queasiness to get in the way of potentially saving someone’s life. He needn’t have worried.

Sprawled on the floor, in the water that soaked every inch of the house, was the ruined, headless body of a woman in her thirties, doubtless the one who had called. The call had been for a medical emergency, not a violent attack, but this person had clearly been ripped apart. Her head appeared to have been torn from her body, judging by the shredded flesh around the neck. The woman lay across the bathroom floor, facing into the corner.

“Better get police in here,” Carter said over his shoulder, giving Sherry something to distract her from the violence.

A man’s hand lay draped over the edge of the tub, dripping bloody water on the floor. Carter took two steps into the washroom and almost lost his lunch.

The body in the tub was semi-submerged in bloody water. The head looked like it had been caught in a combine, shredded and twisted, ripped apart from itself. Brains and bits of flesh coalesced around the drain, which was blocked by one of the man’s feet. Carter had never seen anything like it.

Back in the master bedroom, Sherry was on the phone with the police, stammering through an explanation that dispatch no doubt was questioning the validity of even as she spoke. Carter took a look around the room.

On the nightstand was a small, glass jar filled with a grayish cream, perhaps silver sulfadiazine. He picked it up and saw it had been prescribed for extremely dry skin. Carter knew all about that. His feet were perpetually dry and cracked. Itched like a mother when he finally got his shoes off at the end of the day.

Normally he wouldn’t even consider taking something from what was clearly a crime scene, but he was at his wits end with his feet. With a quick glance at Sherry to be sure she wasn’t looking, he pocketed the jar.

He couldn’t wait to slather it all over his feet before bed that night.